February 27, 2024 • 58 mins
This week, Ben and Pat discuss the fantastical life of Heinrich Schliemann. His life was full of far travels, great riches, bold lies, and even bolder thievery. What was real about the man and what was his own imagination? Perhaps one of the founding father's of archeology, he discovered the ancient city of Troy, and then sort of blew it up. A badass at the time, in retrospect, a bit of a mixed bag! Take a listen...
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The clang of pickaxes and the grunts of workers carrying
away baskets of dirt ring out over the archaeological site.
They've been digging and digging, finding old walls, old pots,
but they were hoping to discover not only legendary treasure,
but also proof that Homer's epic of the Trojan War
(00:31):
was based on historical fact. Heinrich Schliemann, former grocery clerk
turned businessman turned archaeologist, is wondering whether it's time to
give up. He digs into another wall like he's been doing.
But what's that a glint of gold? He tells the
(00:56):
workers to go take a break. He looks closer. Oh yeah,
that glint is real, ancient treasure. Could it be the
riches of the Royal House of Troy, the treasure of
King Pryan himself? Heinrich is speechless. The myth is real.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Hello and welcome back to Badass of the Week. My
name is Ben Thompson and I am here as always
with my co host, doctor Pat Larish. Pat, how are
you doing today?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I'm doing okay? How are you?
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Ben? I'm doing okay, Pat, you you have an.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Interesting badass for us today.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I've kind of told the last couple of stories, but
today you're going to be telling the story. And it's
one that I'm not that familiar with, but I know
the general idea, but it's it's a pretty good one.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So yeah, and ual for us kind of unusual in
that he's not a murderer, didn't actually kill anyone.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
I mean, he didn't kill anyone with his.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Very hands, yeah, yeah, or with a weapon or whatever. Yeah,
but I guess I tend to lean towards nerdy bad asses.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah. We were looking at it right before the show of like,
how many badasses be written about that had, like, you know,
literally been directly responsible for the death of another human.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And it actually isn't that bad.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Like looking at the feed, you know, scrolling back through it,
it's not terrible. We're not we're not super bloodthirsty. But
I do think that you have a guiding hand in that.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I'm sure I'll take credit. That's a good thing, right,
I mean, I'll take credit for it.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I think it's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, And it's more challenging. It makes it harder to
write about the badass if they didn't kill anybody. If
they you know, if it's if it's Henry Johnson and
the Harlem hell Fighter is killing six guys, or.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
It's an easy story to write.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
It's a little more challenging if they if they didn't,
you know, weren't quite so overtly badass.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Okay, Yeah, but you've got Staslov Petrov, who is badass
for actually not starting a nuclear war and not.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Killing everybody on Earth. That's also badass.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yeah, yeah, big ups to him. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, So you said you tend towards nerdy badasses, and
that sounds like what we have today. Yeah, you're going
to be talking about Heinrich Schlieman, who is the guy
who discovered Troy, the ruins of the ancient, presumably mudical
city of Troy. You know, I love that we're going
(03:45):
to do this right after we did the episode on
Ramsey's The Great. Because I do a lot of talks
at schools, I have a book series called Guts and Glory,
which is kind of I jokingly refer to it as
Badass Junior in my head because it's basically this kind
of thing that we're doing, but it's for middle school
and high school age audiences, and I go and do
(04:09):
talks at schools for Guts and Glory, and one thing
I talk about is how difficult it is to write
about history and talk about history. And one of the
main reasons that it's hard is because a lot of
history is filtered through human beings telling a story. And
when human beings tell that story, they have an agenda
that they're trying to get across, and it doesn't necessarily
(04:32):
always imply that it's nefarious, but they, oh, no.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
I'd like to think that, say, our podcast Ben is
not nefarious.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
And so you know, the example I always give is,
you know, imagine you're at the lunch table with a
bunch of your friends and two of your friends get
into an argument and they storm off and they're mad.
And I interview those two people, I'm going to get
two very different stories about what happened. I interview the
other people sitting at that table, I'm going to get
a different story from each one of them. I show
(05:02):
the HD footage with perfect audio to the classroom I'm
talking to. Every kid in that room is going to
give me a different answer as to what they saw
or different story as to what they saw. And that
assumes everybody is trying to tell the truth. Yhi, with
a lot of history is not true, right. A lot
of historians are when this guy is writing the biography
(05:23):
of the emperor and he is being paid by the
emperor to write it, and he will die if it
doesn't make the emperor look good.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah, or he's writing the biography of the previous emperor
whom the current emperor doesn't like.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Because he.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Sometimes happens.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah, Actually, that guy was terrible, and you were gru
did the right thing by murdering that.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
And so you know, the story that I always like
to talk about with that is the story we talked
about last week with Ramses the Great and the Battle
of Kadesh, which you know, he went off and he
fought the Battle of Kadesh, and he came back and he.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Said, oh, I defeated the Hittites.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
He built this big monument, drew these huge pictures of
himself just driving chariots, literally driving chariots over the Hittites.
And then when we did the archaeological we dug it
up thousands of years later. For thousands of years, everybody
believed that Ramses the Great destroyed the Hittites at the
Battle of Kadesh, and then we realized actually, at best
it was a draw. At worst he got crushed, right,
(06:25):
But that was the truth for a long time. But
then there's the other.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Side of it, which is what we're going to talk
about today, which.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Is, you know, you read the Iliad and the Odyssey,
and there's so many Greek gods involved in magic and
mythology and all of this stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
You think, oh, there's no way.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
This is definitely allegory, this is definitely met There's no
way that the Battle of Troy was real until some guy,
Heinrich Schleiman, he goes out there, Heinrich or Heinrich.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Heinrich, although when he published his autobiography in English he
called himself Henry Shliman.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Oh interesting.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Anyway, he goes out there and he finds Troy, and
everybody has their minds blown because they thought this thing
was a myth. And then it turns that it was real,
and and.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
So you know, that's the others.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
The opposite of the Battle of Kadesh is that everybody
thought Troy was fake because Aphrodite was there, and then
and Ares is fighting there, and Achilles is invincible because
he got dipped into a jar of invincibility potion or whatever.
But then it's real, and now nobody knows what to
believe about anything. And that's the crazy bit about writing history.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yeah, the story is always changing. And you might think, okay,
is his claim that he found Troy not believable. No,
he actually did find Troy. He found a city that
scholars agree, archaeologists agree is Troy, and we have inscriptions
and linguistic evidence. And that's what's cool about this whole story.
(07:54):
And in a way, what's even cooler, I guess, is
the story of him as a human. So I mentioned
his autobiography, so how to put it. Some of the
things he says in his autobiography are not one hundred
percent corroborated by outside sources.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
So he's like, he's the microcosm of this whole thing.
He's making stuff up, and he discovered the thing. He's
discovered a real thing that nobody thought was real.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he had a very lively
mind and a very vivid imagination, and sometimes it went
in very useful directions, and sometimes well it was entertaining
for him at least, or at least for me as
I'm learning about.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah, it's okay, so let me just let me just
confirm here. So Heinrich Suleiman, he wrote an autobiography about
his life and the discovery of Troy, because he became
very famous for discovering Troy and it being corroborated as yes,
this is literally Troy, this is this is where the
(09:07):
battle took place. And you know, this was a real
thing that happened in real life. You know for sure,
like aphroditing areas weren't there, but like it was a
battle between Greeks and Trojans.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
There were they where these gods were not literally present,
was a real thing.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yes, it was a real battle in a real place
that actually happened between Cans and Trojans. And it was
here and he found it, and he wrote a book
about it. And the book has a lot of exaggeration, Yes,
potentially exaggeration, uncorroborated evidence. He might have been embellishing his Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Told the historical fiction version of his story.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, he might have made himself the main character. I
learned a good phrase recently. I've learned that there's a
the kids these days, if you want to call it that,
there's a phrase called you describe somebody as being a
main character. And this is a derogatory term that you
used to to somebody who believes that the entire world
(10:12):
revolves around them. They are the main character of their
own story. And I like this. I learned this recently.
I enjoy I enjoy this.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So he's kind of the main He's kind of a
main character, main character of his own story.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, okay, And you know this is a guy who
likes stories.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yes, and is good at telling them, and told a
good one he did, yes, and we are going to
retell it. I think, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah,
all right, Pat is going to retell it after this.
And I do want to kind of preface this by
saying I knew of this story, but I had never
(10:50):
read his biography. I knew very little about him other
than that he discovered Troy before we started working on
this episode. You guys, stick with us. We're going to
take a quick break and we'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
So welcome back. Heinrich Schliemann was born in eighteen twenty two.
He grew up in Germany. His father was a Lutheran
pastor and Heinrich spent most of his childhood in a
town called akas Hagen, surrounded by folklore, like there were
stories that there was like you know, gold in the hills,
and there was you know this that and the other
(11:32):
kind of grim's fairy tale type thing going on.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
He went to a nice school, and he says his
father told him stories from the Iliad and the Odyssey,
and his father told him about the destruction of Pompeii
and Herculaneum by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
These are all things.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
So this is the mid eighteen hundreds at this point,
we like early eighteen.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Hundreds, yea.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And these are things that you know, he's a Lutheran pastor.
But the stories we've talked about this in the past
of you know, at a certain point in history, a
lot of mythology and folklore and just basically all fiction
kind of becomes fiction that is religious based, right, generally
(12:17):
Catholic and then Protestant, but generally like Christian religion based.
When you're talking about the stories that are being told
in Germany. But the ilitating the Odyssey, they persisted, they
never went out of style, even though they don't even
though they involve false gods and stuff. So like you
talked about with Hercules, where Hercules he kind of becomes
(12:38):
synthesized a little bit with some of the saints every
once in a while, but he becomes.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
An allegory for this, that and the other moral virtue and.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah, sure, yeah, but they keep these stories because these
stories have persisted in Western culture for so long that
you cannot eradicate them, and they're still in the public
mind in the eighteen hundreds when amongst like Lutheran priests.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So Heinrich grows up surrounded by stories which,
you know, whatever your personal beliefs about the gods, you know, Aphrodite, aries,
hera Zeus, whatever your personal beliefs. There's also a lot
of just actual human drama. You know, you've got warriors
(13:22):
being tested in battle. You've got you know, wives and
parents and children saying you know, tearful farewells to their
soldiers about to go off to war. You know, there
are people being just kind of pissy and sulky, and
so you know, these are these are good stories, you know,
hashtag relatable. And you know, his father tells him about
(13:43):
POMPEII and Herculaneum, you know, the ancient towns in Italy
that were destroyed by Vesuvius, which started to get dug
up in the previous century. And so Heinrich grows up
with on the one hand, these epics that have been
around for millennia, and then on the other hand the
(14:06):
knowledge that there are ancient cities that are out there
in the ground and they're a little hidden, but we
can discover them.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
And that's interesting because I never really thought about it
like that, because you know, we think of when we
picture Pompeii and Herculaneum, we think of, you know, the
people who were kind of turned to stone basically, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, yeah, just covered by the ash bam. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah, and that's it. And you can go there and
you can see them in that state, but.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
You forget that that was lost to history for a while.
I didn't really think about it, but that was dug
up within Hendrick Chima's father's lifetime.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
So yeah, and you know, Ben, as you said, you know,
Troy at this point was it was thought of as
a fantasy place. It was an idea, not really a place.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
On a map, you like a camelot or a changer.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Later more to yeah exactly. Yeah. Heiner in his autobiography
says that, okay, you know, his young self and his
father made an agreement that one day, young Heinrich, well
grown up Heinrich, would excavate Troy. Now, I just want
to pause here for a moment and say that some
(15:20):
people think that he might have been making this up,
like did he and his father actually have an agreement
that he would dig up Troy? Because if you look
at various diaries, he doesn't mention it for quite some time,
you know. So on the other hand, I don't know,
you know, I.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Don't know this prophecy. How can you guys do? Right?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, it was prophecied by his father and him and
they made a deal and they went this good don't
mess with the good story.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Okay, So yeah, so no, it's a good story. I
also wanted to say that, you know, sometimes there are
things that you know, parents and children say to one
another that don't get written down, but they still stay
inside your heart, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
So that's what how But I love the idea that,
like he joked that one time once when he was
like eight, I'll dig up there one day. I'm sure
you will buddy, and then he does, and he's like, oh, oh, man,
I remember when I was eight, Like, oh, I totally
forgot about that, but that was I totally did it.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah yeah, yeah. And then well, so this sounds like
kind of a cool childhood, you know, like, hey, you know,
you and your dad are just like telling stories about
cool stuff, you know. And then in eighteen thirty three,
when he's like eleven, his mom, who has been very
(16:36):
busy producing children. Heinrich is the fifth of seven, his
mom dies in childbirth. Two hundred of his dad's parishioners
come to the house. Yeah, why are they supporting the
family in their time of grief?
Speaker 1 (16:52):
You know?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Did they want to offer their condolences to bereaved Reverend
Ander Schlimann. Now they're there to show their disapproval of
Reverend Ernst Schlimann. They're banging pots and pans and just
just not being quiet about it. And what are they
disapproving of? Apparently he had embezzled from the parish.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
So Ernst Schleimann, his wife dies giving birth to a
kid who might or might not have lived. Yeah, and
in his time of grief, two hundred of the people
that go to his church to listen to his sermons,
come to his house and bang pots and pans and
(17:38):
yell at him in broadest of him. Yeah wow, And
presumably Heinrich is there to witness this. So, yeah, Ernst Schleman,
(17:58):
even if he was like a re your piece of crap,
like this seems excessive, he'd have to be like really
really bad.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I mean I kind of wonder if maybe his wife
was the one factor kind of holding this all off,
like out of respect for her. Maybe they held off
during her lifetime, and then they're like, oh.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
They're not like disrespecting her.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
They're like finally like like it's like, oh, it's like
it's not a protest over her. It's like we liked her,
and now that she's gone, we're gonna your.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Next or like we can finally tell you how we feel.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah, the thing is so Ernst, how to put it,
he wasn't the world's most most faithful husband.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Uh? That seems like this tracks.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
From Yeah, So Reverend Ernst Sliman gets suspended without pay
and Heinrich, who had been going to high school, they
can't really afford his school anymore, oh dear, And this
is Heinrich who's growing up with stories of the Trojan
War and POMPEII and Herculane and he's got this very
lively mind and this lively imagination. Okay, so what do
(19:05):
you do? He gets a job at the grocery store,
which is okay, you know, it's a thing that people do,
it's honest work. So yeah, So Heinrich's doing his grocery
store job. He's stocking the shelves, he's sweeping the floor.
Heinrich's at the grocery store, you know, doing his thing,
you know. And one night he's working the light shift
(19:28):
and some dude walks in and he is drunk off
of his gourd. And Heinrich he knows this guy. Oh
guten abend, Nedelhoffer, How can I help you? And how
Niederhoffer says something Heinrich doesn't understand. It's all Greek to him.
(19:48):
But it's not because her Niederhoffer is slurring his words
because he's drunk, although he might have been slowing them
a little bit. Men, and I d a tale peleiadeo
achilaus aquileus. Hmmm. Her Niederhoffer goes on for a few
more lines, a few more lines a tre des teanaxandrone
(20:13):
Gaidios Achilos. Wait a minute, he thinks, Atrades Achilius, he
knows these names. Atradees, that's Agamemnon of the House of Atreus.
He led the combined forces of Greece across the sea
(20:33):
to Troy. Achilleus, that's Achilles, the best of the Achaeans,
the mighty Greek warrior, son of a goddess who yeah,
got dipped into invincibility potion, whose mood could turn the
tide of war.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
And he was extremely moody.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Well yeah, I mean, okay, the first literally, the first
word of the Iliad is men in anger, sing to me,
muse of the of Achilles.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
So Heinrich is there, and you know, he probably sets
aside his mop or whatever. He's just lost in the
rhythm of the verse. It's Greek, it's beautiful, and as
God as his witness, he's going to learn Greek one
of these days, gosh darn it. So Heinrich is stuck
in his grocery store rut for a bit. Okay, after
(21:24):
a certain point he starts coughing up blood. Were you
expecting that expectorating that No, so he starts coughing off
blood and that sucks, and it's not really compatible with
him continuing as a grocery store clerk, and so that
(21:45):
also sucks, but it also frees him up for other opportunities.
He gets a job as a cabin boy on a
ship headed to Columbia. I guess they don't mind that
he's coughing up blood. I don't know. Yeah, so I
guess that's cool. He gets to expand his horizons.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Sounds pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
So what does he do in Columbia. Well, he doesn't
actually make it to Colombia. The ship just makes it
to the coast of the Netherlands, and just off the
coast of the Netherlands, a there's a shipwreck. And he
says that, okay, he survived, and also all of his
luggage survived, or so he claims, or okay, all of
his luggage. Of all of the people on the ship,
(22:22):
he's the only one whose luggage whose possessions survived. And
he says that he hears a voice saying heinrich, your
fortunes are about to take a turn for the better. Okay.
He doesn't make it to Columbia, but he hangs out
in Amsterdam and he gets a job as a gopher
in Amsterdam merchant house. Like he's good at finding menial
(22:43):
tasks to do that pay enough to get buy on.
You know, he's in this, he's in this commercial enterprise.
And he observes the situation and he's like, wait a minute.
This is a trading house. They trade they you know,
they are merchants. A lot of their business partners, a
(23:04):
lot of their trade partners are in countries that are
not here, and they speak other languages there. Oh, learning
languages might be useful. And he also figures out that
he's good at learning languages. He came up with his
own system for learning languages. One part of it involves
reading a passage or maybe even writing a passage and
(23:25):
getting a speaker to correct it for you if available,
and just reciting that passage a lot louder if you
don't understand it, because apparently reciting it louder helped reinforce
it for him, I don't know. Supposedly he learned English
in six months, and then French, and then Dutch and
d d and he's Dune.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Okay, So he's because he's been saying he wanted to.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
He wanted to before we get to the ancient Greek
centric part of the story. He's in Amsterdam. He's basically trades,
he makes a lot. He actually gets a better job
at a different commercial house and said eighteen forty four
he's working for a bh Schroeder in.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Company that is a very like Dutch eighteen forty four
name for a company.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
It totally is. Yeah, like I can picture it on
one of those brick houses with those high roofs, you
know that you see in Amsterdam. Yeah, and he realizes that, Okay,
the company that he's working for does business with, among
other people, Russians, but no one at the company actually
speaks Russian. So what do you think Heinrich.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Does he learns Russian?
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yes, I would say that Russian is an incredibly difficult language.
But if he learned Dutch, then who knows that the
possibilities are limitless if you can speak Dutch, because that
language is even more possible.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
What about Dutch is that it's actually it's actually very
closely related to English.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
It looks insane, it looks crazy when I look at that.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Oh yeah, it totally does it totally does. But if
you hear it spoken, you might hear words like or
if you say, if you learn that, oh, this word
means this word in English, then it totally makes sense.
But sat doesn't stop Heinrich. He decides to learn Russian
and he manages to get himself a nice job in
Saint Petersburg. So he's doing that for a few years,
and then in eighteen fifty one, he gets news from
(25:17):
California that his brother Ludwig, because remember he's one of
several siblings, Ludwig, his brother, had moved out to California
during the gold Rush and died of typhoid fever. Before
he died, Ludwig had made you a considerable amount of wealth.
So heinrichtually moves out to California and taps into that
(25:40):
whole vibe, opens a bank in Sacramento, basically goes into
the gold dust trade. He manages to move over a
million dollars worth of gold dust in the span of
six months.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
And that's a million dollars in eighteen fifty one, which
is like ten billion dollars in ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah, Ludwig, you were my favorite brother, Yes, yes, Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
So that's it just his brother dies and he moves
to Sacramento and.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Opens the bag. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Yeah, a couple of good business deals and his life's different.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
He's good at picking stuff up apparently, you know. And
among his customers are the Rothschilds. Yes, you know, the
famous rothschild that works out for a bit, but then
things go sour because okay, the Rothschild's agent out in
California files a complaint. Okay, looks like Schlimann maybe has
(26:38):
been shorting the shipments of gold dust. Like he says
it's a certain amount, it's actually a little less than
that amount, so.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
It's been kind of cutting it with actual dust, maybe
cutting with sand. He's got a little bit of his
dad and him was also embezzling money from his parishioner.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yeah. So Schleiman, who has mentioned in his journal around
this time that yeah, he's been ill a few times,
he all of a sudden becomes seriously ill and he
needs to leave California for health reasons. Like okay, I think, yes, yes, yes, yes,
so yeah, we actually wants journal. And there are a
(27:20):
lot of things in his journal and in his autobiography
that he published that sound plausible. But maybe aren't actually
quite true, so I'll just list a few. He says
he got US citizenship in eighteen fifty, when California became
a state. That's not true. He didn't actually get citizenship
(27:40):
until eighteen sixty nine. And anyway, on that date in
eighteen fifty, which would have been July fourth, our friend
Heinrich was actually in Saint Petersburg, and I mean Saint Petersburg, Russia,
not Saint Petersburg, Florida. He claims to have had dinner
with President Millard Fillmore and his family. Might have just
(28:00):
been something he wrote in his journal based on regurgitating
some newspaper articles. Also in his journal, he says that
he was present at the fire of San Francisco on
June fourth, eighteen fifty one. The thing is that fire
took place in May, not June, and the text of
his journal entry looks an awful lot like newspaper articles
(28:23):
that were published about this event. So hmmm, anyway, anyway.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
You know, was in the area, familiar with I knew
somebody who was there.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
I'm guilty of this sometimes.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, you know. And maybe his journal is a way
of processing information that he has received.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
I who knows anyway, his journal, right, his autobography is
different from his journal.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that's that's okay. You can write
whatever you want in your journal.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Oh totally yeah, yeah, I can write that on that's okay. Yeah,
the Prime Minister of the Moon.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
If he's publishing it in his autobiography, that's a little different,
I suppose, because then he's expecting you.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
To buy it, literally buy it. But you know, his journal,
maybe he didn't expect anybody to see it.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Yeah, you know what, you're writing your journal. It's for you,
you know, anyway, one way or another. He makes bank, Okay,
he has money. So what does this guy do with
all of his money?
Speaker 1 (29:26):
There's one million dollars, which I can only hear in
the voice of doctor Evil.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And I would like
to think that some of our listeners, or maybe all
of our listeners, are picturing us putting our pinky fingers
to the corner of our lips.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
I liked it because you did that.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
The second I started that phrase, he did the doctor
Evil gesture.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah yeah, I think we're contractually obligated to do the
doctor Evil gesture anyway, anytime anyone says one million dollars.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
So what does he do with his one million dollars?
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Should we tell you after the break?
Speaker 1 (30:03):
I think we have an idea, but yes, we should
get into it after the break. Welcome back. We are
talking about Heinrich Schleimann. It is the mid eighteen sixties.
(30:29):
Heinrich Schleiman is a German citizen who has immigrated to
California because his rich brother dies leaves him some money
in California, which Heinrich Schleiman turns into a million dollars,
possibly by embezzling from the Rothschilds who get mad at
him and he flees.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
I think just before the Civil War. So now he's
kind of wandering around with a bunch of money and
isn't quite sure what to do with it. But he
is classically trained in the the the Homrian epics.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
He speaks a bunch of languages, and according to some
versions of the story, he has been prophesied to be
the man who discovers Troy.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Is that generally accurate?
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (31:19):
I mean prophecied as in like when he was little,
maybe he and his dad had a little thing like,
oh hey, heinra Chin, you'll grow up to discover Troy,
right the way you might say to your kid, like, hey,
you'll yeah, you'll grow up to be an astronaut, right,
I mean, which could be true.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Honestly seems unlikely at the moment, but probably seemed really
unlikely that Hyrich Shreeman was going to discover Troy as well.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah, yeah, especially since a lot of people didn't really
think Troy was real real. It was just, you know,
it was a state of mind. It was the imaginary
space where epics take place. But he actually, you know,
he's okay, he's not the only person who's thinking along
these lines. He gets himself over to Turkey in eighteen
(32:03):
sixty eight. So he meets this guy named Frank Calvert,
who was the United States Vice consul, and he owns
a land in the area of Hissarlik. And okay, here's
the thing. Calvert actually had the idea that maybe this
is where Troy is. And this is as opposed to
(32:27):
another town called Bernabashi, which is where some people were thinking,
we're hypothesizing that, Okay, maybe this is where maybe if
Troy is a historical place, maybe it's in this place
called Bernabashi. So Calvert has this idea. Shlimann recognizes what
he thinks is a good idea and runs with it,
kind of literally, because in the Iliad there's a scene
(32:50):
where Achilles, the Greek hero, chases Hector, the Trojan hero,
around the walls of Troy. A few times. Shlemann was
using this as a way to kind of eyeball realistic sights.
You know, is the proposed site at Bernabashi? Is the
topography realistic for one dude chasing another dude around a
(33:14):
city wall? Several times? He didn't think so, but in
his harlok, he's thinking, Okay, yeah, we've got you know,
a hill, we've got a plane. It somehow it made
sense to him. Now, let's see, do I want to
give a little bit of chronology here? The events of
the Trojan War, at least according to you know, Greek
(33:37):
traditional chronology, might have been twelfth or eleventh century BC.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Twelfth to eleventh century BC.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Yeah, like the lifetime of Ramses the second, oh who
died in twelve thirteen BC. I guess it's okay, Yeah,
just at the cusp of the twelfth century. So the
Battle of Cadesh would have been one hundred years before
the Trojan.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
War maybe, I mean, okay, I say twelveth or eleven,
like it's all kind of vague, but.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Between between one hundred and eleven hundred years before the
Trojan War.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
Yeah, but same time, I Hitsit's.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Now. The Homeric Epics were composed probably sometime in the
eighth or seventh century, so you know, the poems describing
these events, and they weren't really put down in writing
until the sixth or fifth centuries. And I say all this.
Why do I say all this? Well, yeah, context Schlimann
is convinced that this town of Hissarlik is the site
(34:48):
of ancient Troy.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
And Hitserlic at this time is a functioning town. It's
a real place that people are living currently.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Yeah, not like a ruin.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
No, so Hisserlick is the modern name. But really it's
a reference to this kind of hill area that's a
mound that's looking kind of ancient.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Okay, so it's like a it's an ancient site.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
But yeah, yeah, yeah, we you know, but it's just
sort of there and it's been there. And in eighteen
sixty nine, Heinrich Shlimann, like you do, writes a dissertation
and he's arguing that his his Erlk is the site
of Troy. He submits the dissertation to the University of
(35:38):
Rostock and they award him the dissertation, the you know,
doctorate or whatever in absentia, because I guess that's a
thing you do. So Schlimann argues that Hisserluck is the
site of Troy. You know, this is based on a
lot of other people's ideas. You know, it's kind of
moving from oh, yes, Calvert has convinced me to okay,
(35:59):
I convinced Hellvert, you know, okay whatever. He starts excavations
in eighteen seventy one. He gets about one hundred workers,
one hundred and fifty workers. He also, and this is
also important, gets the Fermont, which is the official paperwork
from the Ottoman Empire because we're in Turkey, remember granting
him permission to dig, and there are all sorts of
(36:21):
requirements and stipulations. An Ottoman official has to be there,
and Shliman has to pay this guy himself, you.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Know, and sure, I mean this is kind of standard.
It is in digging in ancient sites in various parts
of the world. Right, do you want to excavate some
Egyptian tomb. There's going to be a government official there
with you, right, like, yes, yeah, this happens all over
the place.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Yeah, And so you know, Shliman is there. He's got
his group of workers whom he's recruited from the local populace.
You know, he claims to have served as an unofficial
doctor for the whole group. There's a story where allegedly
there was a seventeen year old girl from the area
who was almost too weak to walk. She had lots
(37:13):
of sores on her skin, and he gave her castor oil,
which is something I only think about in a nineteenth
century context. He had her do some exercises, spend time
in the sea every day. He also had his wife Sophia,
give her a nice dress out of her own collection. Supposedly,
this all worked, and she walked for three miles one
(37:35):
day to thank him. Her sores were completely gone. I
don't really know how to assess this claim.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Did Sleiman have any training as a doctor.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
I don't think so. I'm thinking well, because everyone was
giving I mean, in certain parts of the world, everyone
was using castor oil is like the thing that you
that you take for health.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
I guess yes, pat Us is prophecy because the twin
brothers of Helen of Troy wore castor and pollocks, so
castor oil caster. This this, oh my god, this is
definitely the size it works galaxy brain.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
WHOA, Okay, it.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Helps to picture this guy because he is kind of
like a nerdy looking guy. But if you put him
in the top eighteen hundreds Germany. He wears a top hat,
he's got a mustache. Sometimes you see him glasses, not always,
but like it's he's awesome. This guy looks looks like.
This guy looks great. Like you should look up a
picture of Heinrich Schleiman because it's very worth it. And
(38:45):
just imagining him kind of working at a grocery store
and being like, I'm going to discover Troy one day,
and then he does.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Yeah, he thinks he's got to figure it out. It's
this big hill here that was sight of some ancient
hit type thing that never really got excavated. But he's
going to find his own Pompeii underneath this pilot dirt.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yeah, so there's this big mound and you're okay, if
you're convinced that somewhere in this mound is a city
that was described in an epic that you love, which if.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
You found it would be one of the most like
sacred sites in all of human history.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Yeah, you think you have found Camelot, You think you
have found Atlantis? Right, yeah, I think it's here and
it's under this mound of dirt.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
So how would you approach the digging process?
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Well, I imagined it involves a lot of tiny paintbrushes,
and I've watched them like kind of dig out dinosaur bones,
where you like, you have a little tiny chisel and
you have a little child sized toothbrush.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Sure, pay pressure or.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Whatever, and you keep brush brush, brush, brush, brush, brush brush,
and eventually, after twenty years of hard labor, you find
the top of a bone that you can uncover.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Yeah, and you're carefully taking notes and uh, you know,
preserving the context, So taking pictures of everything, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
rubbing yep, and like what layer are you finding things out?
Because that gives you valuable context, you know. So our
dude brings in battering rams and windlasses and I honestly
(40:33):
had to look up what a windlass was. It's a
huge contraption with like pulleys and whatever, and it's just big.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Wind glass. Yes, so I'm currently googling a picture of
what that looks like.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Yeah, oh it's.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Like a this is like a machine.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yeah, it's like a big chain and like some cranks.
This is not yeah, this is not a delicate piece
of equipment. No, no, this is medieval looking. This is
like a medieval tortured device looking.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
This is not a handheld trowel. It is not a
child sized toothbrush.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
This is the thing you used to like dig a well.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yeah, yeah, so he digs. He and his team dig
a huge trench right through the middle of the mount.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Like a that's how you excavate, like a badass, drive
a bulldozer directly through the excavation site. You're gonna take
a striation here and see what's there.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Yeah, and this trench it's forty meters wide. What is that?
Like one hundred and thirty feet it's fifty six feet deep,
which is like seventeen meters and I think it's I
think it's about seventy meters. When does that come to
like about two hundred and ten feet or whatever? Long?
Speaker 1 (41:52):
It's huge, forty it's huge, twenty yards. It is not
swimming pool, like like an Olympic sized swimming pool. That's
just like your backyard swimming pool.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Yeah yeah, And it goes down the equivalent of like
several stories of a house, you know, like several basements,
sub basements, you know, and he actually winds up. He's
just Leroy Jenkins. He just goes right on down through
you know, the mound, and he's going through some of
the buildings, some of the walls that are there. You know,
(42:27):
should I take a moment to talk about stratigraphy, like
what does it mean to have layers?
Speaker 3 (42:32):
I think you should, because I don't even know what
that word means.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Okay, imagine that. Okay, you think back to your childhood,
and let's pretend. Let's imagine that everything you owned as
a child you just threw in a pile in the
middle of your room, and you just kept adding things
as the years go on. So the stuff at the
bottom of the layer is going to be when you
were a little kid, you know, as she puts it,
(42:57):
you know, the clothing is the small in the lowest layer,
but the legos are the biggest because you know, how
like they have those big chonky legos for little kids.
And then over the years you just keep throwing stuff
and stuff, so the clothing is getting bigger, you know.
Instead of a onesie, you've got like, you know, jeans
and t shirt or whatever. If you just don't touch
that pile, you can actually go back and look at
(43:20):
the layers and say, oh, okay, oh wow, here are
all my my like dinosaur toys, and oh, here is
some like homework or a project for or whatever, I
don't know, from second grade. Oh that must mean that
second grade was the year that I was really excited
about dinosaurs or whatever. So that's what someone might deduce
from going through the layer very carefully. You know.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
You see this in geology sometimes where it's a whole
old thing is like different layers of Earth have different
things sitting in them. That's you can kind of age
age time.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Yeah, yeah, and this totally works if the layers are
kept intact. But if like say, I don't know, your
family dog decides to just go digging through and just
go fro and like throw everything all over the place,
then you know, hey, you've got a dinosaur toy over here,
You've got I don't know, you know whatever over there.
(44:14):
You know, if someone goes through and just kind of
plows on.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
If you're digging a foundation for a skyscraper and you're
blasting through seven. We talked about this with a Bodoca,
where like there's that botical line where there's a piece
of earth underneath certain parts of London that is scorched
because Bodoka burned the earth there, and you know whatever
sixty a d or something. If you dig deep enough
(44:39):
to build the foundation for a big skyscraper, you hit
that and you're probably chucking pieces of that boutical layer
up onto the surface, which confuses everything.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so let's return to our friend Heinrich
Schlimann and him daging this big huge ditch, this big
huge trench right through the middle of the hill. I'm like, okay,
so that kind of messes things up in archaeologists stuffed
they're like, oh, dude, could you kind of have like
not done that.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Okay, here's a toothbrush man, just just just do this.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Yeah. Yeah. Now the thing is the layers. They're nine
layers of the city, and there are even like subdivisions
within each layer, you know, And okay, so that's a
lot to get through whatever means you're using to get
through it. And they dig and they did, and they
dig they you know, they find some metal stuff, they
find some pottery stuff. But like, you know, where's King Priam,
(45:36):
Where's Hector the Hero? Where's Androma key? You know? And Okay,
so they're like this is worthwhile. Sure, cool, there's a
whole bonding experience for all of us. I guess all
good things must come to an end. Digging is, for
one reason or another, scheduled to stop on June fifteenth,
eighteen seventy three. So June fourteenth, eighteenth seventy three rolls around,
(46:01):
dig dig dig. You know, maybe Heinrich is thinking, oh,
maybe I should have stayed in California. Dig dig, dig.
And they're getting down to the layer that we now
know as Troy two. And the way we number it
is we actually start with Troy one as the bottom layer.
So Troy two is the second oldest layer. Eureka, oh,
(46:22):
whoa is this Homer's Troy? Oh mg, Sleiman thinks, so
there's gold, there's jewelry. He calls it Priam's Treasure after
the King of Troy and the Iliad. And you know,
Homer's iliot is cool. Therefore the coolest stuff we find
must be evidence that this is the Trojan War layer.
It's kind of circular reasoning. But to be fair, our
(46:44):
chaeology was still developing as a field, you know.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Yeah, I mean it's eighteen This predates like even the
discovery of the King Tattoomb is not for another fifty years, right,
We're in the eighteen seven, eighteen seventy three, Like this
is early for this.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Yeah. So yeah, so it's totally legit to be totally
frustrated with his methods, and also it's legit to you know,
put him in context.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
So, yeah, he had he was kind of limited by
his equipment as well, and by you know, the understanding
of the field at the time. And yeah, he was
doing his best, right, and he literally had no training
in this at all.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Yeah, which, okay, take that as it is, you know,
But and nowadays archaeologists don't think that the layer that
he got excited about is actually the layer that would
correspond to the time period of the Trojan War. The
general consensus is that the Trojan War layer is actually
the layers known as Troy six or Toy seven anyway.
But still it's finding cool.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
That's that's the that's the that's those people who want
to put feathers on torontosaurs rexes. Yeah, so yeah, I
don't want to open that jar of worms.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
I don't think so. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
So Slevan's there and his wife, Sofia, was there for
some of the time. And then as the story goes,
he's like gazing out over the dig site, he sees
a glint of something. Oh, could it be old aolcds. No,
THO hadn't been invented yet. Yeah, you're paying attention. Yeah,
it's like, hey, workers, you have burned arrest, go take
(48:22):
a break. And then he and Sophia they go over
and Sophia helps Heinrich carry out the gold. She even
carries some of it out in her shawl. And so
these these gold pieces from the treasure, some of these
are really elaborate jewelry. And there's a famous photo of
(48:44):
Sofia Schliemann wearing like a headdress and necklaces that were found. Now,
the thing is this story might be exaggerated, and actually
she wasn't at the dig for very much time. Okay,
but whatever, it's a good story. It's a good story.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
There's a picture for wearing a bunch of jewels from jewels
and gold from sites.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
So yeah, did do that at some point.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Yeah, somehow it happened. Yeah, Now, what do you do
with all the gold? Well, according to the regulations and
the deal that Shliman had arrived at with the Ottoman government,
the Ottoman government is entitled to half of it, which
area fair. It's their country, you know, they get to
(49:28):
make the rules. Now, Ben, if you were Heinrich Shliman
and you found a whole bunch of really cool gold
jewelry and other things in an archaeological site in northwestern
Anatolia under the Ottoman Empire, what would you do?
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Well, being in Indiana Jonesy and archaeologist, I would say
it belongs in a museum.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
Okay, clearly it belongs in a museum. We can build
a museum.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
Of Troy, and we can make it at this site,
and we can house all of the artifacts here, because
this is human human history, and this is a great
site of ancient ancient mythology and folklore and it's real
and I discovered it, and you can make a little
plaque to me, and.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
That will be my contribution to human civilization.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
However, however, that's like, that's a very twenty twenty four
way of responding. This was not twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
And I also want to say that, yeah, Heinrich Schlimann
and his father also have a just a little history
of embezzling money from people who don't think that some
of it should belong to them.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
Okay, So, Ben, if you were Indiana Jones, you would
put it in a museum. And you know whose museum
it might be, the museum of the people whose country
it actually is.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Yeah, I mean at the eighteen hundreds response to that
is that you put it in the British museum, because that's
where all the artifacts.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
In the world go.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
I mean, yeah, he's up British, he's German, so maybe
put it in a German music.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Well, okay, so he actually offers it first to the
Greek government.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Oh and I don't think the Ottoman Empire would like
that very much.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
That doesn't stick. He offers it to the French, he
offers it to the Russians. Eventually he actually finds it's well,
not forever home, but it's home in Berlin.
Speaker 3 (51:24):
But what about that fifty Automan tax?
Speaker 2 (51:27):
Well, they find out they sue him.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
Oh, he smuggles it. He smugs it out of the country.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
He smuggles it, he smuggles yah yah yeah yeah yeah yeah,
doo do do do.
Speaker 3 (51:39):
He stuffs it.
Speaker 1 (51:41):
He puts it all on his wife Sophia, and she
wears it out of the steamer on a steamership.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
Yeah you know.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
Yeah, that's where that picture was taken.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
No, I had this when I out here.
Speaker 3 (51:59):
I showed up with this. I'm not claiming it on
my taxes, no.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Yeah, so he does actually have to pay a fine,
like okay, yeah, yeah yeah, and this is in Berlin
and actually later during World War Two, it actually has
to get packed up and like stored in various secret
locations and whatever.
Speaker 3 (52:19):
Anyway, that's kind of cool though. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
Yeah, so that's kind of his biggest thing. That wasn't
the only place he dug He also dug in at
the sights of Mycenae and Tirans, both in Greece. Actually,
his archaeological technique actually got better from our perspective as
he went because he got feedback from people who were
like thinking about ways to do things.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
This was still kind of early in the process of
archaeology developing as a science. But I think it might
also be fair to say that, you know, he is
refining them later on in life, and you know, when
we start seeing some of the egitology stuff in the
nineteen twenties and some of the a lot of this archaeologist,
like the study of archaeology didn't really exist when he
(53:08):
was operating, and he probably had a big hand in
developing literally developing that field of study. Don't do what
I did that time, because I was actually dumb, because
I wrecked this whole field.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
I wrecked Troy six, which was actually.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
The one I wanted anyway, But learned from my mistakes
and we can improve upon it in the future.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
Yeah, school and honestly raised the profile of archaeology in
the public eye, right Yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
This was this was I mean it was like if
somebody found Atlantis, right, Like that was the way that
it was presented in the press around the world. He
became like basically an international hero overnight. Yeah, for proving
that the Trojan War was real when everybody thought it
he was crazy, everybody thought it was fiction.
Speaker 3 (54:00):
Pretty amazing, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
So he is do people appreciate him in his lifetime,
So I would feel like there's a chance that, you know,
if somebody told you today that they found Atlantis, and
I think a thousand people have now claimed that they
have found Atlanta's a lot of people being like, this
is your full of crap, Like, no, this isn't So
did people Did he get appreciated in his own lifetime?
Speaker 2 (54:26):
He did get appreciated in his own lifetime, you know,
he you know, he lived a pretty good life in Greece,
his you know, beloved adopted home. His wife Sophia was
herself Greek.
Speaker 3 (54:40):
So he lives in Greece and Greek.
Speaker 1 (54:42):
Greece has attained independence by this point because last Karna Bobolina,
Oh yeah, yes.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
Yeah yeah. And I think discovering Troy probably was a
big boost to you know, it was a good symbolic
boost to Greece. He when he dies, he actually receives
a tomb and on the tomb is written the hero Schleimann.
And hero is a very specific word here because it's
(55:14):
a word from Homeric Greek. It is a word that
refers to people like Achilles, figures like Achilles or Agamemnon
or Hector. So you know, he's remembered, as you know,
at least linguistically among the characters in his beloved epic The.
Speaker 3 (55:33):
Great Heroes of History The Great Badasses of History.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
He has okay, he has several children. He has a son.
In particular, he has a son named Agamemnon, who becomes
the Greek ambassador to the United States. So I mean, hey,
you know, his family's.
Speaker 3 (55:49):
Doing pretty well. It's all coming full circle.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
Yeah wow, okay, Soleman, that's the little clink you but
I like it. Yeah, yeah, And so that is Heinrich Shliman.
He was some guy who ended up becoming a world
famous archaeologist by going all in, going completely all in
(56:13):
with his fortune, which he was never going to make
again because he inherited it and he had no chance
of like doing that again. He spent his entire wealth
to find Troy and it worked out for him. He
became a hero in his own life. He became a
national hero of Greece, a person a national hero of
the world, a person who discovered a thing that nobody
(56:34):
believed was possible and then got to enjoy the benefits
of being a hiro Shliman, which is kind of awesome. Yeah, well, Pat,
thank you so much for telling the story today.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
Thanks for helping me tell a story, Ben, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:52):
Yeah, And thanks to all of you out there for
listening and for subscribing and following our show and keeping
up with a every week. We really appreciate it and
we will look forward to seeing you on the next episode.
Thank you so much, and we will see you on
the next one.
Speaker 2 (57:11):
Stay Badass. Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast
produced by High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me,
Pat Larish, and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is
by me and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs
Brandon Phibbs. Mixing and music and sound design is by
(57:33):
Jude Brewer. Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart Badass
of the Week is based on the website Badass of
Theweek dot com, where you can read all sorts of
stories about other badasses. If you want to reach out
with questions ideas, you can email us at Badass Podcast
at badassoftheweek dot com. If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen,
(57:58):
and tell your friends and your enemies if you want as.
We'll be back next week with another one. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The clang of pickaxes and the grunts of workers carrying
away baskets of dirt ring out over the archaeological site.
They've been digging and digging, finding old walls, old pots,
but they were hoping to discover not only legendary treasure,
but also proof that Homer's epic of the Trojan War
(00:31):
was based on historical fact. Heinrich Schliemann, former grocery clerk
turned businessman turned archaeologist, is wondering whether it's time to
give up. He digs into another wall like he's been doing.
But what's that a glint of gold? He tells the
(00:56):
workers to go take a break. He looks closer. Oh yeah,
that glint is real, ancient treasure. Could it be the
riches of the Royal House of Troy, the treasure of
King Pryan himself? Heinrich is speechless. The myth is real.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Hello and welcome back to Badass of the Week. My
name is Ben Thompson and I am here as always
with my co host, doctor Pat Larish. Pat, how are
you doing today?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I'm doing okay? How are you?
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Ben? I'm doing okay, Pat, you you have an.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Interesting badass for us today.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I've kind of told the last couple of stories, but
today you're going to be telling the story. And it's
one that I'm not that familiar with, but I know
the general idea, but it's it's a pretty good one.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So yeah, and ual for us kind of unusual in
that he's not a murderer, didn't actually kill anyone.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
I mean, he didn't kill anyone with his.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Very hands, yeah, yeah, or with a weapon or whatever. Yeah,
but I guess I tend to lean towards nerdy bad asses.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah. We were looking at it right before the show of like,
how many badasses be written about that had, like, you know,
literally been directly responsible for the death of another human.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And it actually isn't that bad.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Like looking at the feed, you know, scrolling back through it,
it's not terrible. We're not we're not super bloodthirsty. But
I do think that you have a guiding hand in that.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I'm sure I'll take credit. That's a good thing, right,
I mean, I'll take credit for it.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I think it's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, And it's more challenging. It makes it harder to
write about the badass if they didn't kill anybody. If
they you know, if it's if it's Henry Johnson and
the Harlem hell Fighter is killing six guys, or.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
It's an easy story to write.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
It's a little more challenging if they if they didn't,
you know, weren't quite so overtly badass.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Okay, Yeah, but you've got Staslov Petrov, who is badass
for actually not starting a nuclear war and not.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Killing everybody on Earth. That's also badass.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yeah, yeah, big ups to him. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, So you said you tend towards nerdy badasses, and
that sounds like what we have today. Yeah, you're going
to be talking about Heinrich Schlieman, who is the guy
who discovered Troy, the ruins of the ancient, presumably mudical
city of Troy. You know, I love that we're going
(03:45):
to do this right after we did the episode on
Ramsey's The Great. Because I do a lot of talks
at schools, I have a book series called Guts and Glory,
which is kind of I jokingly refer to it as
Badass Junior in my head because it's basically this kind
of thing that we're doing, but it's for middle school
and high school age audiences, and I go and do
(04:09):
talks at schools for Guts and Glory, and one thing
I talk about is how difficult it is to write
about history and talk about history. And one of the
main reasons that it's hard is because a lot of
history is filtered through human beings telling a story. And
when human beings tell that story, they have an agenda
that they're trying to get across, and it doesn't necessarily
(04:32):
always imply that it's nefarious, but they, oh, no.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
I'd like to think that, say, our podcast Ben is
not nefarious.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
And so you know, the example I always give is,
you know, imagine you're at the lunch table with a
bunch of your friends and two of your friends get
into an argument and they storm off and they're mad.
And I interview those two people, I'm going to get
two very different stories about what happened. I interview the
other people sitting at that table, I'm going to get
a different story from each one of them. I show
(05:02):
the HD footage with perfect audio to the classroom I'm
talking to. Every kid in that room is going to
give me a different answer as to what they saw
or different story as to what they saw. And that
assumes everybody is trying to tell the truth. Yhi, with
a lot of history is not true, right. A lot
of historians are when this guy is writing the biography
(05:23):
of the emperor and he is being paid by the
emperor to write it, and he will die if it
doesn't make the emperor look good.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah, or he's writing the biography of the previous emperor
whom the current emperor doesn't like.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Because he.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Sometimes happens.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah, Actually, that guy was terrible, and you were gru
did the right thing by murdering that.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
And so you know, the story that I always like
to talk about with that is the story we talked
about last week with Ramses the Great and the Battle
of Kadesh, which you know, he went off and he
fought the Battle of Kadesh, and he came back and he.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Said, oh, I defeated the Hittites.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
He built this big monument, drew these huge pictures of
himself just driving chariots, literally driving chariots over the Hittites.
And then when we did the archaeological we dug it
up thousands of years later. For thousands of years, everybody
believed that Ramses the Great destroyed the Hittites at the
Battle of Kadesh, and then we realized actually, at best
it was a draw. At worst he got crushed, right,
(06:25):
But that was the truth for a long time. But
then there's the other.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Side of it, which is what we're going to talk
about today, which.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Is, you know, you read the Iliad and the Odyssey,
and there's so many Greek gods involved in magic and
mythology and all of this stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
You think, oh, there's no way.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
This is definitely allegory, this is definitely met There's no
way that the Battle of Troy was real until some guy,
Heinrich Schleiman, he goes out there, Heinrich or Heinrich.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Heinrich, although when he published his autobiography in English he
called himself Henry Shliman.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Oh interesting.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Anyway, he goes out there and he finds Troy, and
everybody has their minds blown because they thought this thing
was a myth. And then it turns that it was real,
and and.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
So you know, that's the others.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
The opposite of the Battle of Kadesh is that everybody
thought Troy was fake because Aphrodite was there, and then
and Ares is fighting there, and Achilles is invincible because
he got dipped into a jar of invincibility potion or whatever.
But then it's real, and now nobody knows what to
believe about anything. And that's the crazy bit about writing history.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yeah, the story is always changing. And you might think, okay,
is his claim that he found Troy not believable. No,
he actually did find Troy. He found a city that
scholars agree, archaeologists agree is Troy, and we have inscriptions
and linguistic evidence. And that's what's cool about this whole story.
(07:54):
And in a way, what's even cooler, I guess, is
the story of him as a human. So I mentioned
his autobiography, so how to put it. Some of the
things he says in his autobiography are not one hundred
percent corroborated by outside sources.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
So he's like, he's the microcosm of this whole thing.
He's making stuff up, and he discovered the thing. He's
discovered a real thing that nobody thought was real.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he had a very lively
mind and a very vivid imagination, and sometimes it went
in very useful directions, and sometimes well it was entertaining
for him at least, or at least for me as
I'm learning about.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah, it's okay, so let me just let me just
confirm here. So Heinrich Suleiman, he wrote an autobiography about
his life and the discovery of Troy, because he became
very famous for discovering Troy and it being corroborated as yes,
this is literally Troy, this is this is where the
(09:07):
battle took place. And you know, this was a real
thing that happened in real life. You know for sure,
like aphroditing areas weren't there, but like it was a
battle between Greeks and Trojans.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
There were they where these gods were not literally present,
was a real thing.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yes, it was a real battle in a real place
that actually happened between Cans and Trojans. And it was
here and he found it, and he wrote a book
about it. And the book has a lot of exaggeration, Yes,
potentially exaggeration, uncorroborated evidence. He might have been embellishing his Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Told the historical fiction version of his story.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, he might have made himself the main character. I
learned a good phrase recently. I've learned that there's a
the kids these days, if you want to call it that,
there's a phrase called you describe somebody as being a
main character. And this is a derogatory term that you
used to to somebody who believes that the entire world
(10:12):
revolves around them. They are the main character of their
own story. And I like this. I learned this recently.
I enjoy I enjoy this.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So he's kind of the main He's kind of a
main character, main character of his own story.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, okay, And you know this is a guy who
likes stories.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yes, and is good at telling them, and told a
good one he did, yes, and we are going to
retell it. I think, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah,
all right, Pat is going to retell it after this.
And I do want to kind of preface this by
saying I knew of this story, but I had never
(10:50):
read his biography. I knew very little about him other
than that he discovered Troy before we started working on
this episode. You guys, stick with us. We're going to
take a quick break and we'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
So welcome back. Heinrich Schliemann was born in eighteen twenty two.
He grew up in Germany. His father was a Lutheran
pastor and Heinrich spent most of his childhood in a
town called akas Hagen, surrounded by folklore, like there were
stories that there was like you know, gold in the hills,
and there was you know this that and the other
(11:32):
kind of grim's fairy tale type thing going on.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
He went to a nice school, and he says his
father told him stories from the Iliad and the Odyssey,
and his father told him about the destruction of Pompeii
and Herculaneum by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
These are all things.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
So this is the mid eighteen hundreds at this point,
we like early eighteen.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Hundreds, yea.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And these are things that you know, he's a Lutheran pastor.
But the stories we've talked about this in the past
of you know, at a certain point in history, a
lot of mythology and folklore and just basically all fiction
kind of becomes fiction that is religious based, right, generally
(12:17):
Catholic and then Protestant, but generally like Christian religion based.
When you're talking about the stories that are being told
in Germany. But the ilitating the Odyssey, they persisted, they
never went out of style, even though they don't even
though they involve false gods and stuff. So like you
talked about with Hercules, where Hercules he kind of becomes
(12:38):
synthesized a little bit with some of the saints every
once in a while, but he becomes.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
An allegory for this, that and the other moral virtue and.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah, sure, yeah, but they keep these stories because these
stories have persisted in Western culture for so long that
you cannot eradicate them, and they're still in the public
mind in the eighteen hundreds when amongst like Lutheran priests.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So Heinrich grows up surrounded by stories which,
you know, whatever your personal beliefs about the gods, you know, Aphrodite, aries,
hera Zeus, whatever your personal beliefs. There's also a lot
of just actual human drama. You know, you've got warriors
(13:22):
being tested in battle. You've got you know, wives and
parents and children saying you know, tearful farewells to their
soldiers about to go off to war. You know, there
are people being just kind of pissy and sulky, and
so you know, these are these are good stories, you know,
hashtag relatable. And you know, his father tells him about
(13:43):
POMPEII and Herculaneum, you know, the ancient towns in Italy
that were destroyed by Vesuvius, which started to get dug
up in the previous century. And so Heinrich grows up
with on the one hand, these epics that have been
around for millennia, and then on the other hand the
(14:06):
knowledge that there are ancient cities that are out there
in the ground and they're a little hidden, but we
can discover them.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
And that's interesting because I never really thought about it
like that, because you know, we think of when we
picture Pompeii and Herculaneum, we think of, you know, the
people who were kind of turned to stone basically, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, yeah, just covered by the ash bam. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah, and that's it. And you can go there and
you can see them in that state, but.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
You forget that that was lost to history for a while.
I didn't really think about it, but that was dug
up within Hendrick Chima's father's lifetime.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
So yeah, and you know, Ben, as you said, you know,
Troy at this point was it was thought of as
a fantasy place. It was an idea, not really a place.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
On a map, you like a camelot or a changer.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Later more to yeah exactly. Yeah. Heiner in his autobiography
says that, okay, you know, his young self and his
father made an agreement that one day, young Heinrich, well
grown up Heinrich, would excavate Troy. Now, I just want
to pause here for a moment and say that some
(15:20):
people think that he might have been making this up,
like did he and his father actually have an agreement
that he would dig up Troy? Because if you look
at various diaries, he doesn't mention it for quite some time,
you know. So on the other hand, I don't know,
you know, I.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Don't know this prophecy. How can you guys do? Right?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, it was prophecied by his father and him and
they made a deal and they went this good don't
mess with the good story.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Okay, So yeah, so no, it's a good story. I
also wanted to say that, you know, sometimes there are
things that you know, parents and children say to one
another that don't get written down, but they still stay
inside your heart, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
So that's what how But I love the idea that,
like he joked that one time once when he was
like eight, I'll dig up there one day. I'm sure
you will buddy, and then he does, and he's like, oh, oh, man,
I remember when I was eight, Like, oh, I totally
forgot about that, but that was I totally did it.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah yeah, yeah. And then well, so this sounds like
kind of a cool childhood, you know, like, hey, you know,
you and your dad are just like telling stories about
cool stuff, you know. And then in eighteen thirty three,
when he's like eleven, his mom, who has been very
(16:36):
busy producing children. Heinrich is the fifth of seven, his
mom dies in childbirth. Two hundred of his dad's parishioners
come to the house. Yeah, why are they supporting the
family in their time of grief?
Speaker 1 (16:52):
You know?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Did they want to offer their condolences to bereaved Reverend
Ander Schlimann. Now they're there to show their disapproval of
Reverend Ernst Schlimann. They're banging pots and pans and just
just not being quiet about it. And what are they
disapproving of? Apparently he had embezzled from the parish.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
So Ernst Schleimann, his wife dies giving birth to a
kid who might or might not have lived. Yeah, and
in his time of grief, two hundred of the people
that go to his church to listen to his sermons,
come to his house and bang pots and pans and
(17:38):
yell at him in broadest of him. Yeah wow, And
presumably Heinrich is there to witness this. So, yeah, Ernst Schleman,
(17:58):
even if he was like a re your piece of crap,
like this seems excessive, he'd have to be like really
really bad.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I mean I kind of wonder if maybe his wife
was the one factor kind of holding this all off,
like out of respect for her. Maybe they held off
during her lifetime, and then they're like, oh.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
They're not like disrespecting her.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
They're like finally like like it's like, oh, it's like
it's not a protest over her. It's like we liked her,
and now that she's gone, we're gonna your.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Next or like we can finally tell you how we feel.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah, the thing is so Ernst, how to put it,
he wasn't the world's most most faithful husband.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Uh? That seems like this tracks.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
From Yeah, So Reverend Ernst Sliman gets suspended without pay
and Heinrich, who had been going to high school, they
can't really afford his school anymore, oh dear, And this
is Heinrich who's growing up with stories of the Trojan
War and POMPEII and Herculane and he's got this very
lively mind and this lively imagination. Okay, so what do
(19:05):
you do? He gets a job at the grocery store,
which is okay, you know, it's a thing that people do,
it's honest work. So yeah, So Heinrich's doing his grocery
store job. He's stocking the shelves, he's sweeping the floor.
Heinrich's at the grocery store, you know, doing his thing,
you know. And one night he's working the light shift
(19:28):
and some dude walks in and he is drunk off
of his gourd. And Heinrich he knows this guy. Oh
guten abend, Nedelhoffer, How can I help you? And how
Niederhoffer says something Heinrich doesn't understand. It's all Greek to him.
(19:48):
But it's not because her Niederhoffer is slurring his words
because he's drunk, although he might have been slowing them
a little bit. Men, and I d a tale peleiadeo
achilaus aquileus. Hmmm. Her Niederhoffer goes on for a few
more lines, a few more lines a tre des teanaxandrone
(20:13):
Gaidios Achilos. Wait a minute, he thinks, Atrades Achilius, he
knows these names. Atradees, that's Agamemnon of the House of Atreus.
He led the combined forces of Greece across the sea
(20:33):
to Troy. Achilleus, that's Achilles, the best of the Achaeans,
the mighty Greek warrior, son of a goddess who yeah,
got dipped into invincibility potion, whose mood could turn the
tide of war.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
And he was extremely moody.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Well yeah, I mean, okay, the first literally, the first
word of the Iliad is men in anger, sing to me,
muse of the of Achilles.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
So Heinrich is there, and you know, he probably sets
aside his mop or whatever. He's just lost in the
rhythm of the verse. It's Greek, it's beautiful, and as
God as his witness, he's going to learn Greek one
of these days, gosh darn it. So Heinrich is stuck
in his grocery store rut for a bit. Okay, after
(21:24):
a certain point he starts coughing up blood. Were you
expecting that expectorating that No, so he starts coughing off
blood and that sucks, and it's not really compatible with
him continuing as a grocery store clerk, and so that
(21:45):
also sucks, but it also frees him up for other opportunities.
He gets a job as a cabin boy on a
ship headed to Columbia. I guess they don't mind that
he's coughing up blood. I don't know. Yeah, so I
guess that's cool. He gets to expand his horizons.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Sounds pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
So what does he do in Columbia. Well, he doesn't
actually make it to Colombia. The ship just makes it
to the coast of the Netherlands, and just off the
coast of the Netherlands, a there's a shipwreck. And he
says that, okay, he survived, and also all of his
luggage survived, or so he claims, or okay, all of
his luggage. Of all of the people on the ship,
(22:22):
he's the only one whose luggage whose possessions survived. And
he says that he hears a voice saying heinrich, your
fortunes are about to take a turn for the better. Okay.
He doesn't make it to Columbia, but he hangs out
in Amsterdam and he gets a job as a gopher
in Amsterdam merchant house. Like he's good at finding menial
(22:43):
tasks to do that pay enough to get buy on.
You know, he's in this, he's in this commercial enterprise.
And he observes the situation and he's like, wait a minute.
This is a trading house. They trade they you know,
they are merchants. A lot of their business partners, a
(23:04):
lot of their trade partners are in countries that are
not here, and they speak other languages there. Oh, learning
languages might be useful. And he also figures out that
he's good at learning languages. He came up with his
own system for learning languages. One part of it involves
reading a passage or maybe even writing a passage and
(23:25):
getting a speaker to correct it for you if available,
and just reciting that passage a lot louder if you
don't understand it, because apparently reciting it louder helped reinforce
it for him, I don't know. Supposedly he learned English
in six months, and then French, and then Dutch and
d d and he's Dune.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Okay, So he's because he's been saying he wanted to.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
He wanted to before we get to the ancient Greek
centric part of the story. He's in Amsterdam. He's basically trades,
he makes a lot. He actually gets a better job
at a different commercial house and said eighteen forty four
he's working for a bh Schroeder in.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Company that is a very like Dutch eighteen forty four
name for a company.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
It totally is. Yeah, like I can picture it on
one of those brick houses with those high roofs, you
know that you see in Amsterdam. Yeah, and he realizes that, Okay,
the company that he's working for does business with, among
other people, Russians, but no one at the company actually
speaks Russian. So what do you think Heinrich.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Does he learns Russian?
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yes, I would say that Russian is an incredibly difficult language.
But if he learned Dutch, then who knows that the
possibilities are limitless if you can speak Dutch, because that
language is even more possible.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
What about Dutch is that it's actually it's actually very
closely related to English.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
It looks insane, it looks crazy when I look at that.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Oh yeah, it totally does it totally does. But if
you hear it spoken, you might hear words like or
if you say, if you learn that, oh, this word
means this word in English, then it totally makes sense.
But sat doesn't stop Heinrich. He decides to learn Russian
and he manages to get himself a nice job in
Saint Petersburg. So he's doing that for a few years,
and then in eighteen fifty one, he gets news from
(25:17):
California that his brother Ludwig, because remember he's one of
several siblings, Ludwig, his brother, had moved out to California
during the gold Rush and died of typhoid fever. Before
he died, Ludwig had made you a considerable amount of wealth.
So heinrichtually moves out to California and taps into that
(25:40):
whole vibe, opens a bank in Sacramento, basically goes into
the gold dust trade. He manages to move over a
million dollars worth of gold dust in the span of
six months.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
And that's a million dollars in eighteen fifty one, which
is like ten billion dollars in ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah, Ludwig, you were my favorite brother, Yes, yes, Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
So that's it just his brother dies and he moves
to Sacramento and.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Opens the bag. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Yeah, a couple of good business deals and his life's different.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
He's good at picking stuff up apparently, you know. And
among his customers are the Rothschilds. Yes, you know, the
famous rothschild that works out for a bit, but then
things go sour because okay, the Rothschild's agent out in
California files a complaint. Okay, looks like Schlimann maybe has
(26:38):
been shorting the shipments of gold dust. Like he says
it's a certain amount, it's actually a little less than
that amount, so.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
It's been kind of cutting it with actual dust, maybe
cutting with sand. He's got a little bit of his
dad and him was also embezzling money from his parishioner.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yeah. So Schleiman, who has mentioned in his journal around
this time that yeah, he's been ill a few times,
he all of a sudden becomes seriously ill and he
needs to leave California for health reasons. Like okay, I think, yes, yes, yes, yes,
so yeah, we actually wants journal. And there are a
(27:20):
lot of things in his journal and in his autobiography
that he published that sound plausible. But maybe aren't actually
quite true, so I'll just list a few. He says
he got US citizenship in eighteen fifty, when California became
a state. That's not true. He didn't actually get citizenship
(27:40):
until eighteen sixty nine. And anyway, on that date in
eighteen fifty, which would have been July fourth, our friend
Heinrich was actually in Saint Petersburg, and I mean Saint Petersburg, Russia,
not Saint Petersburg, Florida. He claims to have had dinner
with President Millard Fillmore and his family. Might have just
(28:00):
been something he wrote in his journal based on regurgitating
some newspaper articles. Also in his journal, he says that
he was present at the fire of San Francisco on
June fourth, eighteen fifty one. The thing is that fire
took place in May, not June, and the text of
his journal entry looks an awful lot like newspaper articles
(28:23):
that were published about this event. So hmmm, anyway, anyway.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
You know, was in the area, familiar with I knew
somebody who was there.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
I'm guilty of this sometimes.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, you know. And maybe his journal is a way
of processing information that he has received.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
I who knows anyway, his journal, right, his autobography is
different from his journal.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that's that's okay. You can write
whatever you want in your journal.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Oh totally yeah, yeah, I can write that on that's okay. Yeah,
the Prime Minister of the Moon.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
If he's publishing it in his autobiography, that's a little different,
I suppose, because then he's expecting you.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
To buy it, literally buy it. But you know, his journal,
maybe he didn't expect anybody to see it.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Yeah, you know what, you're writing your journal. It's for you,
you know, anyway, one way or another. He makes bank, Okay,
he has money. So what does this guy do with
all of his money?
Speaker 1 (29:26):
There's one million dollars, which I can only hear in
the voice of doctor Evil.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And I would like
to think that some of our listeners, or maybe all
of our listeners, are picturing us putting our pinky fingers
to the corner of our lips.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
I liked it because you did that.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
The second I started that phrase, he did the doctor
Evil gesture.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah yeah, I think we're contractually obligated to do the
doctor Evil gesture anyway, anytime anyone says one million dollars.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
So what does he do with his one million dollars?
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Should we tell you after the break?
Speaker 1 (30:03):
I think we have an idea, but yes, we should
get into it after the break. Welcome back. We are
talking about Heinrich Schleimann. It is the mid eighteen sixties.
(30:29):
Heinrich Schleiman is a German citizen who has immigrated to
California because his rich brother dies leaves him some money
in California, which Heinrich Schleiman turns into a million dollars,
possibly by embezzling from the Rothschilds who get mad at
him and he flees.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
I think just before the Civil War. So now he's
kind of wandering around with a bunch of money and
isn't quite sure what to do with it. But he
is classically trained in the the the Homrian epics.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
He speaks a bunch of languages, and according to some
versions of the story, he has been prophesied to be
the man who discovers Troy.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Is that generally accurate?
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (31:19):
I mean prophecied as in like when he was little,
maybe he and his dad had a little thing like,
oh hey, heinra Chin, you'll grow up to discover Troy,
right the way you might say to your kid, like, hey,
you'll yeah, you'll grow up to be an astronaut, right,
I mean, which could be true.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Honestly seems unlikely at the moment, but probably seemed really
unlikely that Hyrich Shreeman was going to discover Troy as well.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah, yeah, especially since a lot of people didn't really
think Troy was real real. It was just, you know,
it was a state of mind. It was the imaginary
space where epics take place. But he actually, you know,
he's okay, he's not the only person who's thinking along
these lines. He gets himself over to Turkey in eighteen
(32:03):
sixty eight. So he meets this guy named Frank Calvert,
who was the United States Vice consul, and he owns
a land in the area of Hissarlik. And okay, here's
the thing. Calvert actually had the idea that maybe this
is where Troy is. And this is as opposed to
(32:27):
another town called Bernabashi, which is where some people were thinking,
we're hypothesizing that, Okay, maybe this is where maybe if
Troy is a historical place, maybe it's in this place
called Bernabashi. So Calvert has this idea. Shlimann recognizes what
he thinks is a good idea and runs with it,
kind of literally, because in the Iliad there's a scene
(32:50):
where Achilles, the Greek hero, chases Hector, the Trojan hero,
around the walls of Troy. A few times. Shlemann was
using this as a way to kind of eyeball realistic sights.
You know, is the proposed site at Bernabashi? Is the
topography realistic for one dude chasing another dude around a
(33:14):
city wall? Several times? He didn't think so, but in
his harlok, he's thinking, Okay, yeah, we've got you know,
a hill, we've got a plane. It somehow it made
sense to him. Now, let's see, do I want to
give a little bit of chronology here? The events of
the Trojan War, at least according to you know, Greek
(33:37):
traditional chronology, might have been twelfth or eleventh century BC.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Twelfth to eleventh century BC.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Yeah, like the lifetime of Ramses the second, oh who
died in twelve thirteen BC. I guess it's okay, Yeah,
just at the cusp of the twelfth century. So the
Battle of Cadesh would have been one hundred years before
the Trojan.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
War maybe, I mean, okay, I say twelveth or eleven,
like it's all kind of vague, but.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Between between one hundred and eleven hundred years before the
Trojan War.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
Yeah, but same time, I Hitsit's.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Now. The Homeric Epics were composed probably sometime in the
eighth or seventh century, so you know, the poems describing
these events, and they weren't really put down in writing
until the sixth or fifth centuries. And I say all this.
Why do I say all this? Well, yeah, context Schlimann
is convinced that this town of Hissarlik is the site
(34:48):
of ancient Troy.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
And Hitserlic at this time is a functioning town. It's
a real place that people are living currently.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Yeah, not like a ruin.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
No, so Hisserlick is the modern name. But really it's
a reference to this kind of hill area that's a
mound that's looking kind of ancient.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Okay, so it's like a it's an ancient site.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
But yeah, yeah, yeah, we you know, but it's just
sort of there and it's been there. And in eighteen
sixty nine, Heinrich Shlimann, like you do, writes a dissertation
and he's arguing that his his Erlk is the site
of Troy. He submits the dissertation to the University of
(35:38):
Rostock and they award him the dissertation, the you know,
doctorate or whatever in absentia, because I guess that's a
thing you do. So Schlimann argues that Hisserluck is the
site of Troy. You know, this is based on a
lot of other people's ideas. You know, it's kind of
moving from oh, yes, Calvert has convinced me to okay,
(35:59):
I convinced Hellvert, you know, okay whatever. He starts excavations
in eighteen seventy one. He gets about one hundred workers,
one hundred and fifty workers. He also, and this is
also important, gets the Fermont, which is the official paperwork
from the Ottoman Empire because we're in Turkey, remember granting
him permission to dig, and there are all sorts of
(36:21):
requirements and stipulations. An Ottoman official has to be there,
and Shliman has to pay this guy himself, you.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Know, and sure, I mean this is kind of standard.
It is in digging in ancient sites in various parts
of the world. Right, do you want to excavate some
Egyptian tomb. There's going to be a government official there
with you, right, like, yes, yeah, this happens all over
the place.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Yeah, And so you know, Shliman is there. He's got
his group of workers whom he's recruited from the local populace.
You know, he claims to have served as an unofficial
doctor for the whole group. There's a story where allegedly
there was a seventeen year old girl from the area
who was almost too weak to walk. She had lots
(37:13):
of sores on her skin, and he gave her castor oil,
which is something I only think about in a nineteenth
century context. He had her do some exercises, spend time
in the sea every day. He also had his wife Sophia,
give her a nice dress out of her own collection. Supposedly,
this all worked, and she walked for three miles one
(37:35):
day to thank him. Her sores were completely gone. I
don't really know how to assess this claim.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Did Sleiman have any training as a doctor.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
I don't think so. I'm thinking well, because everyone was
giving I mean, in certain parts of the world, everyone
was using castor oil is like the thing that you
that you take for health.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
I guess yes, pat Us is prophecy because the twin
brothers of Helen of Troy wore castor and pollocks, so
castor oil caster. This this, oh my god, this is
definitely the size it works galaxy brain.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
WHOA, Okay, it.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Helps to picture this guy because he is kind of
like a nerdy looking guy. But if you put him
in the top eighteen hundreds Germany. He wears a top hat,
he's got a mustache. Sometimes you see him glasses, not always,
but like it's he's awesome. This guy looks looks like.
This guy looks great. Like you should look up a
picture of Heinrich Schleiman because it's very worth it. And
(38:45):
just imagining him kind of working at a grocery store
and being like, I'm going to discover Troy one day,
and then he does.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Yeah, he thinks he's got to figure it out. It's
this big hill here that was sight of some ancient
hit type thing that never really got excavated. But he's
going to find his own Pompeii underneath this pilot dirt.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yeah, so there's this big mound and you're okay, if
you're convinced that somewhere in this mound is a city
that was described in an epic that you love, which if.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
You found it would be one of the most like
sacred sites in all of human history.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Yeah, you think you have found Camelot, You think you
have found Atlantis? Right, yeah, I think it's here and
it's under this mound of dirt.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
So how would you approach the digging process?
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Well, I imagined it involves a lot of tiny paintbrushes,
and I've watched them like kind of dig out dinosaur bones,
where you like, you have a little tiny chisel and
you have a little child sized toothbrush.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Sure, pay pressure or.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Whatever, and you keep brush brush, brush, brush, brush, brush brush,
and eventually, after twenty years of hard labor, you find
the top of a bone that you can uncover.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Yeah, and you're carefully taking notes and uh, you know,
preserving the context, So taking pictures of everything, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
rubbing yep, and like what layer are you finding things out?
Because that gives you valuable context, you know. So our
dude brings in battering rams and windlasses and I honestly
(40:33):
had to look up what a windlass was. It's a
huge contraption with like pulleys and whatever, and it's just big.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Wind glass. Yes, so I'm currently googling a picture of
what that looks like.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Yeah, oh it's.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Like a this is like a machine.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yeah, it's like a big chain and like some cranks.
This is not yeah, this is not a delicate piece
of equipment. No, no, this is medieval looking. This is
like a medieval tortured device looking.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
This is not a handheld trowel. It is not a
child sized toothbrush.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
This is the thing you used to like dig a well.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yeah, yeah, so he digs. He and his team dig
a huge trench right through the middle of the mount.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Like a that's how you excavate, like a badass, drive
a bulldozer directly through the excavation site. You're gonna take
a striation here and see what's there.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Yeah, and this trench it's forty meters wide. What is that?
Like one hundred and thirty feet it's fifty six feet deep,
which is like seventeen meters and I think it's I
think it's about seventy meters. When does that come to
like about two hundred and ten feet or whatever? Long?
Speaker 1 (41:52):
It's huge, forty it's huge, twenty yards. It is not
swimming pool, like like an Olympic sized swimming pool. That's
just like your backyard swimming pool.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Yeah yeah, And it goes down the equivalent of like
several stories of a house, you know, like several basements,
sub basements, you know, and he actually winds up. He's
just Leroy Jenkins. He just goes right on down through
you know, the mound, and he's going through some of
the buildings, some of the walls that are there. You know,
(42:27):
should I take a moment to talk about stratigraphy, like
what does it mean to have layers?
Speaker 3 (42:32):
I think you should, because I don't even know what
that word means.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Okay, imagine that. Okay, you think back to your childhood,
and let's pretend. Let's imagine that everything you owned as
a child you just threw in a pile in the
middle of your room, and you just kept adding things
as the years go on. So the stuff at the
bottom of the layer is going to be when you
were a little kid, you know, as she puts it,
(42:57):
you know, the clothing is the small in the lowest layer,
but the legos are the biggest because you know, how
like they have those big chonky legos for little kids.
And then over the years you just keep throwing stuff
and stuff, so the clothing is getting bigger, you know.
Instead of a onesie, you've got like, you know, jeans
and t shirt or whatever. If you just don't touch
that pile, you can actually go back and look at
(43:20):
the layers and say, oh, okay, oh wow, here are
all my my like dinosaur toys, and oh, here is
some like homework or a project for or whatever, I
don't know, from second grade. Oh that must mean that
second grade was the year that I was really excited
about dinosaurs or whatever. So that's what someone might deduce
from going through the layer very carefully. You know.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
You see this in geology sometimes where it's a whole
old thing is like different layers of Earth have different
things sitting in them. That's you can kind of age
age time.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Yeah, yeah, and this totally works if the layers are
kept intact. But if like say, I don't know, your
family dog decides to just go digging through and just
go fro and like throw everything all over the place,
then you know, hey, you've got a dinosaur toy over here,
You've got I don't know, you know whatever over there.
(44:14):
You know, if someone goes through and just kind of
plows on.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
If you're digging a foundation for a skyscraper and you're
blasting through seven. We talked about this with a Bodoca,
where like there's that botical line where there's a piece
of earth underneath certain parts of London that is scorched
because Bodoka burned the earth there, and you know whatever
sixty a d or something. If you dig deep enough
(44:39):
to build the foundation for a big skyscraper, you hit
that and you're probably chucking pieces of that boutical layer
up onto the surface, which confuses everything.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so let's return to our friend Heinrich
Schlimann and him daging this big huge ditch, this big
huge trench right through the middle of the hill. I'm like, okay,
so that kind of messes things up in archaeologists stuffed
they're like, oh, dude, could you kind of have like
not done that.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Okay, here's a toothbrush man, just just just do this.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Yeah. Yeah. Now the thing is the layers. They're nine
layers of the city, and there are even like subdivisions
within each layer, you know, And okay, so that's a
lot to get through whatever means you're using to get
through it. And they dig and they did, and they
dig they you know, they find some metal stuff, they
find some pottery stuff. But like, you know, where's King Priam,
(45:36):
Where's Hector the Hero? Where's Androma key? You know? And Okay,
so they're like this is worthwhile. Sure, cool, there's a
whole bonding experience for all of us. I guess all
good things must come to an end. Digging is, for
one reason or another, scheduled to stop on June fifteenth,
eighteen seventy three. So June fourteenth, eighteenth seventy three rolls around,
(46:01):
dig dig dig. You know, maybe Heinrich is thinking, oh,
maybe I should have stayed in California. Dig dig, dig.
And they're getting down to the layer that we now
know as Troy two. And the way we number it
is we actually start with Troy one as the bottom layer.
So Troy two is the second oldest layer. Eureka, oh,
(46:22):
whoa is this Homer's Troy? Oh mg, Sleiman thinks, so
there's gold, there's jewelry. He calls it Priam's Treasure after
the King of Troy and the Iliad. And you know,
Homer's iliot is cool. Therefore the coolest stuff we find
must be evidence that this is the Trojan War layer.
It's kind of circular reasoning. But to be fair, our
(46:44):
chaeology was still developing as a field, you know.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Yeah, I mean it's eighteen This predates like even the
discovery of the King Tattoomb is not for another fifty years, right,
We're in the eighteen seven, eighteen seventy three, Like this
is early for this.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Yeah. So yeah, so it's totally legit to be totally
frustrated with his methods, and also it's legit to you know,
put him in context.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
So, yeah, he had he was kind of limited by
his equipment as well, and by you know, the understanding
of the field at the time. And yeah, he was
doing his best, right, and he literally had no training
in this at all.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Yeah, which, okay, take that as it is, you know,
But and nowadays archaeologists don't think that the layer that
he got excited about is actually the layer that would
correspond to the time period of the Trojan War. The
general consensus is that the Trojan War layer is actually
the layers known as Troy six or Toy seven anyway.
But still it's finding cool.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
That's that's the that's the that's those people who want
to put feathers on torontosaurs rexes. Yeah, so yeah, I
don't want to open that jar of worms.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
I don't think so. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
So Slevan's there and his wife, Sofia, was there for
some of the time. And then as the story goes,
he's like gazing out over the dig site, he sees
a glint of something. Oh, could it be old aolcds. No,
THO hadn't been invented yet. Yeah, you're paying attention. Yeah,
it's like, hey, workers, you have burned arrest, go take
(48:22):
a break. And then he and Sophia they go over
and Sophia helps Heinrich carry out the gold. She even
carries some of it out in her shawl. And so
these these gold pieces from the treasure, some of these
are really elaborate jewelry. And there's a famous photo of
(48:44):
Sofia Schliemann wearing like a headdress and necklaces that were found. Now,
the thing is this story might be exaggerated, and actually
she wasn't at the dig for very much time. Okay,
but whatever, it's a good story. It's a good story.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
There's a picture for wearing a bunch of jewels from jewels
and gold from sites.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
So yeah, did do that at some point.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Yeah, somehow it happened. Yeah, Now, what do you do
with all the gold? Well, according to the regulations and
the deal that Shliman had arrived at with the Ottoman government,
the Ottoman government is entitled to half of it, which
area fair. It's their country, you know, they get to
(49:28):
make the rules. Now, Ben, if you were Heinrich Shliman
and you found a whole bunch of really cool gold
jewelry and other things in an archaeological site in northwestern
Anatolia under the Ottoman Empire, what would you do?
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Well, being in Indiana Jonesy and archaeologist, I would say
it belongs in a museum.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
Okay, clearly it belongs in a museum. We can build
a museum.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
Of Troy, and we can make it at this site,
and we can house all of the artifacts here, because
this is human human history, and this is a great
site of ancient ancient mythology and folklore and it's real
and I discovered it, and you can make a little
plaque to me, and.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
That will be my contribution to human civilization.
Speaker 2 (50:17):
However, however, that's like, that's a very twenty twenty four
way of responding. This was not twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
And I also want to say that, yeah, Heinrich Schlimann
and his father also have a just a little history
of embezzling money from people who don't think that some
of it should belong to them.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
Okay, So, Ben, if you were Indiana Jones, you would
put it in a museum. And you know whose museum
it might be, the museum of the people whose country
it actually is.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Yeah, I mean at the eighteen hundreds response to that
is that you put it in the British museum, because that's
where all the artifacts.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
In the world go.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
I mean, yeah, he's up British, he's German, so maybe
put it in a German music.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Well, okay, so he actually offers it first to the
Greek government.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Oh and I don't think the Ottoman Empire would like
that very much.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
That doesn't stick. He offers it to the French, he
offers it to the Russians. Eventually he actually finds it's well,
not forever home, but it's home in Berlin.
Speaker 3 (51:24):
But what about that fifty Automan tax?
Speaker 2 (51:27):
Well, they find out they sue him.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
Oh, he smuggles it. He smugs it out of the country.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
He smuggles it, he smuggles yah yah yeah yeah yeah yeah,
doo do do do.
Speaker 3 (51:39):
He stuffs it.
Speaker 1 (51:41):
He puts it all on his wife Sophia, and she
wears it out of the steamer on a steamership.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
Yeah you know.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
Yeah, that's where that picture was taken.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
No, I had this when I out here.
Speaker 3 (51:59):
I showed up with this. I'm not claiming it on
my taxes, no.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Yeah, so he does actually have to pay a fine,
like okay, yeah, yeah yeah, and this is in Berlin
and actually later during World War Two, it actually has
to get packed up and like stored in various secret
locations and whatever.
Speaker 3 (52:19):
Anyway, that's kind of cool though. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
Yeah, so that's kind of his biggest thing. That wasn't
the only place he dug He also dug in at
the sights of Mycenae and Tirans, both in Greece. Actually,
his archaeological technique actually got better from our perspective as
he went because he got feedback from people who were
like thinking about ways to do things.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
This was still kind of early in the process of
archaeology developing as a science. But I think it might
also be fair to say that, you know, he is
refining them later on in life, and you know, when
we start seeing some of the egitology stuff in the
nineteen twenties and some of the a lot of this archaeologist,
like the study of archaeology didn't really exist when he
(53:08):
was operating, and he probably had a big hand in
developing literally developing that field of study. Don't do what
I did that time, because I was actually dumb, because
I wrecked this whole field.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
I wrecked Troy six, which was actually.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
The one I wanted anyway, But learned from my mistakes
and we can improve upon it in the future.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
Yeah, school and honestly raised the profile of archaeology in
the public eye, right Yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
This was this was I mean it was like if
somebody found Atlantis, right, Like that was the way that
it was presented in the press around the world. He
became like basically an international hero overnight. Yeah, for proving
that the Trojan War was real when everybody thought it
he was crazy, everybody thought it was fiction.
Speaker 3 (54:00):
Pretty amazing, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
So he is do people appreciate him in his lifetime,
So I would feel like there's a chance that, you know,
if somebody told you today that they found Atlantis, and
I think a thousand people have now claimed that they
have found Atlanta's a lot of people being like, this
is your full of crap, Like, no, this isn't So
did people Did he get appreciated in his own lifetime?
Speaker 2 (54:26):
He did get appreciated in his own lifetime, you know,
he you know, he lived a pretty good life in Greece,
his you know, beloved adopted home. His wife Sophia was
herself Greek.
Speaker 3 (54:40):
So he lives in Greece and Greek.
Speaker 1 (54:42):
Greece has attained independence by this point because last Karna Bobolina,
Oh yeah, yes.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
Yeah yeah. And I think discovering Troy probably was a
big boost to you know, it was a good symbolic
boost to Greece. He when he dies, he actually receives
a tomb and on the tomb is written the hero Schleimann.
And hero is a very specific word here because it's
(55:14):
a word from Homeric Greek. It is a word that
refers to people like Achilles, figures like Achilles or Agamemnon
or Hector. So you know, he's remembered, as you know,
at least linguistically among the characters in his beloved epic The.
Speaker 3 (55:33):
Great Heroes of History The Great Badasses of History.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
He has okay, he has several children. He has a son.
In particular, he has a son named Agamemnon, who becomes
the Greek ambassador to the United States. So I mean, hey,
you know, his family's.
Speaker 3 (55:49):
Doing pretty well. It's all coming full circle.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
Yeah wow, okay, Soleman, that's the little clink you but
I like it. Yeah, yeah, And so that is Heinrich Shliman.
He was some guy who ended up becoming a world
famous archaeologist by going all in, going completely all in
(56:13):
with his fortune, which he was never going to make
again because he inherited it and he had no chance
of like doing that again. He spent his entire wealth
to find Troy and it worked out for him. He
became a hero in his own life. He became a
national hero of Greece, a person a national hero of
the world, a person who discovered a thing that nobody
(56:34):
believed was possible and then got to enjoy the benefits
of being a hiro Shliman, which is kind of awesome. Yeah, well, Pat,
thank you so much for telling the story today.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
Thanks for helping me tell a story, Ben, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:52):
Yeah, And thanks to all of you out there for
listening and for subscribing and following our show and keeping
up with a every week. We really appreciate it and
we will look forward to seeing you on the next episode.
Thank you so much, and we will see you on
the next one.
Speaker 2 (57:11):
Stay Badass. Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast
produced by High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me,
Pat Larish, and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is
by me and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs
Brandon Phibbs. Mixing and music and sound design is by
(57:33):
Jude Brewer. Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart Badass
of the Week is based on the website Badass of
Theweek dot com, where you can read all sorts of
stories about other badasses. If you want to reach out
with questions ideas, you can email us at Badass Podcast
at badassoftheweek dot com. If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen,
(57:58):
and tell your friends and your enemies if you want as.
We'll be back next week with another one. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
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